The game I'm designing uses 10 characteristics to define characters, all of which could be seen as moral virtues. They're rated from 1 to 6, 1 being the worst and 6 the best, but I want some meaty adjectives to put on the character sheet describing each level. The reason is to make the player's choices about where they spend their points feel more real... so, instead of putting a 1 in Compassion, you'd be making your character Heartless, for instance. I was wondering if any body had ideas about what would make the best wording. One should be terrible, two unpleasant,three blasé, four "good-average", five good and six exemplary.

Here are the characteristics. Any help would be much appreciated.
Compassion
Equality
Faith
Honor
Hope
Innocence
Insight
Liberty
Passion
Will

FATE has this system. And at the end everybody ends up coming back to numbers...

Not the point really. I imagine a lot of players will ignore the descriptions, but a lot won't. It's to "set the mood," as it were, for later play, a little artifact right on the character sheet to get everyone into playing the game. I used to love checking through the dot descriptions in the earlier editions of WoD games, because they were evocative and descriptive, and I know when I did I would split my dots more and be more hesitant about getting 4/5's because the descriptions drove in what the dots were 'supposed' (designed) to mean even if it didn't quite come home in play. That and the values will change frequently, so I like the idea of being able to circle them and have a word to hang future RP on. So that if your Honor, say, is suddenly one less you can spend a little less time processing what that means and a little more time playing out what it means.

Well. I really don't like the system. But if I'd do it, I'd avoid typical descriptions like: 'great', 'heroic', 'extraodinary', 'super-cool-extraordinary' and so...

Knowing that what counts in roll mechanics is the number... why not giving the player some freedom and the opportunity to show his creativity?

Imagine someone with levels of Honor 'Iñigo Montoya', Compassion 'Dr.Evil', Passion 'I have been married for 20 years' or Faith 'I believe that this edition of D&D is gonna be the final one'. Playing is about having fun!

Yeah, probably just a preference thing, I want non-generic descriptions, but not pop culture references and nothing so light hearted as thats about the opposite of what I'm going for. Thanks for the input though,

Don't have a whole lot of time. So I'll try to help you out with one.
Innocence -
1 - Wicked
2 - Corrupt
3 - Shady
4 - Humane
5 - Pure
6 - Angelic

This is pretty hard to do. The hardest part is the middle two.
I am not sure this is even useful. Might have missed the mark. Good luck. I see revisions in your future.

No, I like it, Wicked is a little off because of what Innocence means specifically in the game, but thanks. I'll try and out up my best goes for each of them tonight.

How's this?

Compassion
1- Tyrant
2- Cruel
3- Indifferent
4- Merciful
5- Benevolent
6- Saint

This is kinda fun.  Let me know if I did it right and you'd like me to do more.